The full story...

Labor laments how the west was lost

ELEANOR HALL: Federal Parliament resumes tomorrow for its critical last sitting before the May Budget.

And once again the Prime Minister is facing leadership pressure. The landslide win on the weekend for the Barnett Liberal government in Western Australia shocked both state and federal Labor politicians.

Former state Labor minister, Alannah MacTiernan told our special election program yesterday that the result should end Julia Gillard's Prime Ministership.

ALANNAH MCTIERNAN: There is absolutely no doubt from a West Australian point of view you would say, you would plead with Julia Gillard to stand down. That the people just do not accept her as their Prime Minister, and that is probably stronger in the Labor seats in the outer suburbs than it is anywhere else.

ELEANOR HALL: You think that this election result should force Julia Gillard's hand?

ALANNAH MCTIERNAN: Well I think, really, someone has to speak to the Prime Minister and say, look, however unfair and unfortunate it is, that there is just not, certainly in Western Australia, there's not the support even amongst Labor Party people in our Labor stronghold seats for her prime ministership.

ELEANOR HALL: What were people telling you?

ALANNAH MCTIERNAN: That there was absolutely no way die hard, rusted-on Labor people, that there would be no way that they would be voting for Labor in the September election.

ELEANOR HALL: That's the former state Labor minister, Alannah McTiernan speaking to us yesterday.

The Defence Minister Stephen Smith disagreed with that assessment but conceded that federal issues played a part in the routing of Labor in Western Australia. Now the Finance Minister Penny Wong says it's clear that the party will have to listen to what voters are saying.

And in a warning to caucus colleagues, she said the Party will not improve its electoral prospects if it keeps talking about itself.

From Canberra, chief political correspondent Sabra Lane reports.

SABRA LANE: The West Australian result is very personal for former federal Labor leader Kim Beazley.

Mr Beazley, from the West, is now Australia's ambassador in the United States.

His father was a federal MP and minister, and Mr Beazley was hoping to pass the political baton to his daughter Hannah, who ran in the weekend election for the state seat of Rivertonů she lost.

KIM BEAZLEY: Well I'm very sad for my daughter. I really hoped she'd win the sit. I think she'd have been a really good member of Parliament. She conducted a classy campaign.

SABRA LANE: Mr Beazley spoke with the ABC's Samantha Hawley.

SAMANTHA HAWLEY: Would it not have mattered, in a sense what she had done, though, there is a view that the federal Labor Party's woes rubbed off substantially here?

KIM BEAZLEY: Well, I'm not going to comment on the process of the election. I'm an ambassador now and I don't intervene in politics. But I do say this: it's a pretty rare thing in good economic times for a one-term government to lose office.

The outcome leaves the Opposition with an opportunity in the future, they haven't been decimated; but they didn't win and it's not surprising they didn't.

SABRA LANE: Maybe not surprising that Labor lost, but the size of the swing has stunned some within the Party.

The Defence Minister Stephen Smith says federal issues were a drag on WA.

The former WA Labor minister, Alannah MacTiernan, has urged the Prime Minister to quit.

PETER GARRETT: People will put their views out there, particularly after an election. But what is important is to maintain a complete focus on the policies that the Prime Minister and this Government want to deliver right up to the election.

And that's what the election's ultimately going to be about. It's not going to be sort of a random comment from someone in Western Australia after an election that determines what happens when we go to a national election. It'll be determined by the substance of the policies in place: education policies, health policies, a National Disability Insurance Scheme, and the Prime Minister will lead us to the election on those policies.

KON VATSKALIS: Her work up in Western Australia was disastrous for the Labor Party, that's what really made me to write these comments. Also, recently I was in Sydney in an oil and gas conference and I met by chance with a very senior Labor politician who told me that the result, they're going to be very, very bad and probably the leaders have to change, just to maintain the number of seats, or to reduce the number of seats lost by Labor in the coming elections.

And I agree with Alannah, Julia is a very decent person. However, really the media and Tony Abbott very cleverly portrayed her as a person not to be trusted, they bring in the issues of leadership. You can be a leader, but you can't be a leader if people are not prepared to follow you.

SABRA LANE: Mr Vatskalis spoke to ABC radio in Darwin.

Parliament resumes tomorrow, for its last sitting fortnight before taking a seven week break.

PENNY WONG: Nothing about federal Labor's challenges are resolved by us talking about ourselves more.

SABRA LANE: The Finance Minister Penny Wong says the WA result can't be blamed on federal Labor. And she's told MPs to get on with making good government happen.

PENNY WONG: As a national government, you always have to listen to what voters are saying, wherever they are across Australia. And it's quite clear from the election result that the message from Western Australians is they want us to do better.

Well we don't do better by talking about ourselves, we do better by doing the right thing by Australians and their families, and that's what we have to focus on.

And the only response from federal Labor to the challenges we currently face should be to govern well, to hold, for example, the Budget discipline that's so important.

SABRA LANE: While the former prime minister Kevin Rudd has repeatedly said he will not challenge Ms Gillard for the job, former Leader Mark Latham reckons the Member for Griffith could do with a promotion to the front-bench as the Climate Change Minister.

MARK LATHAM: Well Rudd is a very good public persuader. He can argue the case. He once said that climate change was the great moral challenge of our time. And I would appeal to him that it's a much better use of his talents and capacities in life to undertake a very important job like that.

It is the big issue for the next 50, 100 years. Much better utilisation of Rudd's talents than being Labor's destabiliser-in-chief, causing all this mischief off the backbench. So, it's time for him and others to pull their heads in and put him in a job where he can do something useful for the country for a change.

Related Links

From the Archives

Sri Lanka is now taking stock of the country's 26-year-long civil war, in which the UN estimates as many as 40,000 Tamil civilians may have been killed. This report by the ABC's Alexander McLeod in 1983 looks at the origins of the conflict as it was just beginning.